Cabo - I believe it is the agenda of the Democratic Party to eventually have EITHER a single payer system like Canada & the UK OR a public/private system like you'll find in France and Switzerland.

That being said, I want to ask you about your use of the term "single payer, budget busting, business killing, country dividing, debt crippling and nation bankrupting system"

All those countries that have public options? Guess what - they pay less than we do. Per capita, sometimes it's less than HALF what we pay ($5700 as of 2008).

This is the personal conundrum I have. As much as I don't like the idea of a National Health Care System like Canada or the UK, they pay SO MUCH LESS than we do and have so much more to show for it. For the complaints I've heard regarding the Canadian system (and having travelled frequently to Canada and reading a Montreal paper on an almost daily basis, I hear a good deal of debate on the subject) we could take their system, fund it a little better to compensate for some of the long waiting lists for certain procedures and STILL save hundreds of billions of dollars.

There isn't a Canadian (or European) citizen that has been kicked off their health insurance because they came down with leukemia. Not a one. Yeah, the UK tends to let older men with prostate cancer go with less treatment (since it's such a slow moving cancer - with my grandfather the 'cure' killed him faster than the disease would have) but they spend about $3000 per capita on health care. We could take their number, spend 1/3 more than they do per capita and STILL save over $1000 per capita.